To say Martin wrestles with the morality of his labor is an overstatement; he and morality play pattycake, at best, and Martin becomes the face of the buyout program. The benefits are financial, immediate and tangible; the costs include his rapidly dissolving marriage, his privacy, the respect of his private eye buddy Charlie, and eventually, the life of his brother, a cop gunned down in the line of duty.
Yes, yes, the transport was amazing. Around her now was her husband’s best work. 1947, Tokyo. Dusk in Rikugien Park, north of the city, the pond reflecting the harvest moon, the drooping pines, their branches in the water, and she could walk down to the edge of the lake, hear yama-gare sing tzu…tzu…tzu flitting their chestnut bellies and black caps among the branches of the matsu pines—for a full seven minutes. Peace.
The rushed ending is a major flaw in an otherwise fairly satisfying novel. Shadow Magic is all about character and Jones and Bennett do a good job with creating characters interesting enough to wish to spend 400 pages with.
Hollywood has a serious case of makeover mania, with adaptations of everything from Transformers to Wuthering Heights on the table. While studio execs are on the prowl for films to remake, I’d like to suggest some movies that could benefit from some updating, whose stories have more to tell, or who just plain deserve another chance.
The pace is smooth and fast, and the author’s vision offers a keen projection of what current techology might become, without glossing over typical flaws. For example, Vaughan’s wrist phone, the description of which put me in mind of Dick Tracy, has poor reception while Vaughan is underneath the spaceship. (Well, duh!) That tiny detail made the video wrist-phone much more believable for me.
One thing to consider then, is the road map we as players give to the other players and to the GM. The difference between how we picture the character in our mind versus how they actually appear to other players. I had a problem with this in one game, where I had a conception in my head, but my play and communication with the others didn’t match this.
It’s just another Friday in Eureka? Sure, if it’s Groundhog Day.
Eureka presents viewers with their first (and hopefully last) flashback show. It is under the guise of some contraption that somehow takes your spoken memories and projects a visual interpretation. Like a clip show.
Her world-building treatment perfectly straddles the line between derivative and inspired, between historical and fantastical; but on exposition alone, the story is not entirely different. Her people are dear, vicious, and real, right down to the piss and the dislocated shoulder; but on characterization alone, the story is not entirely different. What Micklem has done, in creating such a different novel, is do everything (mostly) right rather than one thing brilliantly, another passably, and the last poorly.
I’ve always had a thing for the underdogs of the fantasy genre. They are universal cannon fodder for villains, they are the whetstones upon which first level adventurers hone themselves, and they are just so, so fun to hate. Small, green, big eyes, sharp ears, smelly, gibbering and comical in ferocity, I’m talking about goblins here.
